While serving as a manager in Scottish football, Michael Beale was anything but a reserved individual; in fact, the contentious remarks against Celtic began even before he took over at Rangers.
Beale, who was fired from the Ibrox club and replaced by an interim management staff consisting of Steven Davis and Alex Rae, is notorious for calling Ange Postecoglou “lucky” and over-hyping his own squad without much justification.
All the bravado and loudmouth claims about what the Rangers would have done in the past or what they forced themselves to do in the future are leaving with him. The truth is that his team had to watch Celtic complete a triple when behind by seven points in the early goings of
His statements about what would have happened if he and Steven Gerrard had remained at Ibrox rather than moving to Aston Villa are now rendered even more absurd.
Beale spoke with BT Sport’s Currie Club podcast in November 2022, a few weeks before taking over for Giovanni van Bronckhorst, about his time at Rangers and the role he left the club in as Steven Gerrard’s assistant before moving to England, claiming with certainty that Celtic wouldn’t have won the title in 2021/22 had he stayed.
Do I believe we could have advanced the situation, Beale asked? We would have won the league, in my opinion. We were still four points ahead when we departed. They could not possibly have passed us.
“In eight or nine Old Firms, we hadn’t lost. Because anyone can win in a two-horse race, the next one was possibly in the post. However, none of the games were extremely close. Even though they weren’t in the final score, we had a strong grip on every game when you were in the stadium.
I believe we can definitively dispel the idea that Postecoglou won his first championship because he was widely credited as “the brains” and “the coach” behind the Gerrard period at Celtic.
Ange would have triumphed if he had persisted, exactly like he did the previous season. Beale lacked the talent necessary to succeed on his own at Rangers. Last year, he was defeated in each and every important derby.
Perhaps in his next position, he will be a little more humble and reflect before making any moves to establish his own managerial credentials.
